“UW-La Crosse anatomy students find that working on cadavers provides a ... - La Crosse Tribune” plus 4 more |
- UW-La Crosse anatomy students find that working on cadavers provides a ... - La Crosse Tribune
- Haller joins Moore Magnet - Leaf Chronicle
- PikeView educator named W.Va.’s Outstanding Biology Teacher - Bluefield Daily Telegraph
- 'Synthetic biology' holds promise, but doubts simmer - USA Today
- Flatheads are gobbling giants of the Schuylkill - Mercury
| UW-La Crosse anatomy students find that working on cadavers provides a ... - La Crosse Tribune Posted: 06 Sep 2009 06:36 AM PDT The sign above the door to UW-L's Health Science Center anatomy lab reads, "Mortui vivos docebunt" - "The dead teach the living." Cadavers - dissected and studied in the summer and fall anatomy courses - are considered the "first patients" for the nearly 100 students who pass through that door each year to the lab on the third floor, said Thomas Greiner, UW-L associate professor of anatomy. Those who have donated their bodies to science, he added, deserve the same level of respect and courtesy accorded to the living. "We study anatomy. We don't study cadavers," Greiner said. "Cadavers just happen to be a means of studying anatomy." About 70 graduate students in the doctor of physical therapy, physician assistant and nurse anesthetist programs attend Greiner's 10-week summer course, said Peggy Denton, chairwoman of the Health Professions Department. Another 25 occupational therapy graduate students attend his fall course. The graduate program requires the lab work early, Denton said, because the foundational knowledge then can be applied throughout the students' education. "It was amazing to be able to feel the tactile differences between nerves, arteries and veins, or to have the opportunity to hold unbelievably complex organs, such as the heart, in my own hands." --Jackie Fliess, 22, in her second year of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse's doctor of physical therapy program The University of Wisconsin-Madison sends cadavers to UW-L for $1,500 apiece, Denton said. The donors' identities are not shared. Students in the four graduate programs pay at least 20 percent more than other students to cover the higher costs of training for the medical field. The body preparations in Madison are similar to a funeral, Greiner said - each is embalmed, covered with cloth "to protect their modesty" and then wrapped in plastic. Donors are returned to Madison after dissection and cremated, he said. About half requested their ashes be returned to family. Half are "unlimited donations," with no specified wishes for their remains. "Those people are good specimens for teaching," Greiner said. "If I see a really good example of an arm, I'll take that. Or if I see an interesting variant, I might take that one. I can do research on the temporary people, but then I have to return that piece." Greiner is internationally known for his work at UW-L in anatomy and human evolution, Denton said, and research is an important component. UW-L's Biology and Exercise and Sports Science departments also use dissected cadavers. Most bodies will last four years under the proper conditions, said Kerrie Hoar, coordinator for the undergraduate biology laboratory in Cowley Hall. "It's a matter of if the tissues are well preserved, and if they're kept at a moderate temperature, they're not going to deteriorate," Hoar said. The Biology Department has four cadavers, she said, and the Exercise and Sports Science Department in Mitchell Hall has another two. Having the bodies provides an exciting opportunity for the approximately 550 undergraduate students who go through the biology lab each year. "The respect these students have for the choice these people made is immense," Hoar said. "It was also amazing to see others learn from the perspective of being a (teaching assistant) in the lab - seeing the students' frustration coupled with the high feeling of achievement felt when they started to understand tough topics." - Brad Schaack, 25, in his third year of UW-L's doctor of physical therapy program. Students often have more anxiety over the difficulty of the anatomy course than the dissection, Greiner said. "The myth of somebody fainting in the anatomy lab has never happened," he said. Most students understand working inside a human body is a "rare and wonderful" experience, he said, and it gives them a different perspective on old adages such as "beauty is only skin deep." "You find out when you're doing the dissection that beauty is at the core," Greiner said. "It's only in a couple of special individuals where it makes it to the skin." They also learn to appreciate the variations of the human body. "You need to know how to anticipate those changes and deal with them in a diagnostic and clinically valuable sense," he said. "The selflessness of these individuals has raised my awareness of body donation, and I plan to make some kind of similar contribution with my own body." - Elissa Schmidt, 23, a second-year student in UW-L's doctor of physical therapy program. Greiner began what he calls "a memory celebration" for donors two years ago. Students, faculty and the public are invited each spring to honor the donors by listening to students read poetry, sing and share their experiences. "We're really celebrating their nobility and generosity," he said. Greiner also gives lectures in the Health Science Center - displaying a human heart, brain and lung tissue - to visiting classes from area high schools, Western Technical College and other departments. "It's the people laying in the anatomy lab who are the teachers," he said. "I just get credit for it."
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| Haller joins Moore Magnet - Leaf Chronicle Posted: 06 Sep 2009 09:06 AM PDT Clarksville-Montgomery County School System officials have announced the appointment of a new assistant principal at Moore Magnet School. Madeline Haller has been tapped for the administrative position formerly held by Emily Vaughn who has been named principal at Sango Elementary. Haller comes to local school system with 22 years of experience in education. She taught eighth grade science from 1987-1991. I chose education because once as a substitute teacher I realized I loved being with children and enjoyed being in the classroom, said Haller. She served as assistant principal at Mahaffey Middle School on Fort Campbell from 1991 to 2004 and then one year Wassom Middle before becoming principal at My love is science, but I also really enjoy math. I have taught a graduate class at Austin Peay State University about how to teach math to students, Haller said. Haller earned a masters degree in administration and supervision from Austin Peay and a bachelors degree in biology from Arizona State University. She was selected Kentucky District Assistant Principal of the Year in 2004. Haller says her new focus at Moore Magnet will be facilitate enriching and expanding math and science curriculum. And I have a real passion for helping teachers do their jobs, Haller said. | |
| PikeView educator named W.Va.’s Outstanding Biology Teacher - Bluefield Daily Telegraph Posted: 29 Aug 2009 04:54 PM PDT | Published: August 30, 2009 09:29 pm PikeView educator named W.Va.'s Outstanding Biology Teacher By GREG JORDANBluefield Daily Telegraph GARDNER — Most cupboards contain cups and saucers and cans of beans or soup, but Teresa Barton's cupboards overflow with fossils, animal skulls and sharks' jaws. People give biology teachers all sorts of things, she said. But they are among the many collections and academic attributes that have made the PikeView High School instructor the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) 2009 Outstanding Biology Teacher from West Virginia. The 26-year teaching veteran learned about the honor Aug. 24 during a faculty meeting at PikeView High when Principal Ben Disibbio announced it. "Mr. Disibbio told me, and it was a complete surprise," Barton said. After being nominated for the award, Barton had to compose an essay explaining her role as a biology teacher and her education philosophy. In it, she explained how biology impacts everything her students do every day. The fact helps engage her classes in the lessons. "It's really easy — kids love biology," she explained. "That's usually their favorite science. It's everyday things they're more acquainted with. Hopefully I'll be able to teach them concepts they can use later in life. It's nice if they leave here knowing what poison ivy looks like so they won't get into it later." What's more, biology touches on other subjects. "It's so much more than biology. It's no wonder they think this class is hard. You've got chemistry and you've to physics, all of the sciences rolled into it," Barton explained. And when she teaches a class, she gets to do what she likes to do. "I love science, biology is my favorite science, and I'm from a long line of teachers. As my daughter says, I've been a geek all my life and I'm proud of it." Barton said she also had good role models for teaching. "I had a great biology teacher in high school, Mr. Ballard. All of my science teachers were great at that school," she recalled. "I went to James Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. It was a huge school — we're talking about thousands of students. My graduating class had about 568." The first days of biology class are spent teaching basic skills such as safety, measurements and identifying laboratory equipment, Barton said. "This is kind of getting them ready, so to speak, so they can just take off," she added. The tools used for teaching these lessons have changed throughout Barton's career. Now her classroom has items that was unimaginable not too long ago. "There's a lot more technology now. Who even knew about smart boards, and who knew about computers? I did my master's thesis on a typewriter," she said. New technology is helpful, but some of it steers students away from a teaching approach that Barton prefers; for instances, there are computer models used for anatomy lessons, but she prefers a traditional method. "We dissect an earthworm for an invertebrate and a frog for a vertebrate, and we compare the anatomy. They've got these computerized ones you can do, but they're not as fun." The student sees a computer-generated frog, not a real one. The scalpel the student gets to use is virtual, too. "You scroll down and click and there's the liver. Well, whoopied do," she said. Frankly, a simulated frog is boring. "Boy, to me they are. I'm a firm believer that you have to get your hands on the thing to learn," Barton emphasized. 
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| 'Synthetic biology' holds promise, but doubts simmer - USA Today Posted: 29 Aug 2009 04:54 PM PDT That's "synthetic" as in synthetic biology, the hottest biomedical buzzword, promising new drugs, new fuel and someday, new life. "If we can make life, then we understand it," says molecular biologist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla. Starting with the building blocks of animal and plant cells, synthetic biologists are reengineering living things today and hope to create synthetic life tomorrow. The ultimate goal, Benner says, is "synthesizing life from scratch." That makes experts, including human genome pioneers Craig Venter of Rockville, Md., and Jay Keasling of the University of California-Berkeley, hopeful and cautious at the same time about the promise and peril of the field. In July, a team led by Carole Lartigue of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., reported the field's latest advance in the journal Science: a way to genetically engineer bacteria, previously considered impossible. "Nobody else has done anything remotely like this before," Venter says. The immediate application is engineering defanged vaccine strains for use against the bacteria family chosen for the study. But a lot of other ideas are cooking, from saving the planet from global warming to figuring out just how life started in the first place. The promise In 1974, oncologist Wac{lstrok}aw Szybalski of the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison coined the term "synthetic biology" as a way to describe biologists shuffling genes among organisms. The term has taken on multiple meanings since then in science, says David Rejeski of the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The public largely has no clue, he says: "Nobody really knows what it is." One popular definition championed by MIT's Drew Endy, who founded the non-profit Biobrick Foundation, is an engineering one, in which the parts of cells act as the screws, bolts, bricks and mortar of future biology. Others, such as Venter and Harvard's George Church, talk of building completely man-made cells, with parts all made from scratch. Some recent innovations: • Last year, Keasling's lab unveiled bacteria that make the anti-malaria drug artemisinin by transferring 14 genes into a microbe. • Benner's lab has created an artificial form of DNA that uses six chemicals for the "bases" of a genetic code, unlike the four found in human DNA. • In March, Church announced the creation of artificial "ribosomes," cellular factories that take messenger genes and make proteins that keep cells alive. "Over the next 25 years, synthetic biologically engineered antibiotics could be developed which monitor the adaptation of the bacteria they are designed to kill, and modify their response accordingly," says Richard Kitney of the United Kingdom's Imperial College. "Similarly, synthetically engineered T-cell (immune cell) components could be used to develop a device which is capable of finding and killing cancerous cells." The peril So what's the worry? "Certainly, synthetic biology raises some real concerns about bioterrorism," says molecular biologist Brad Smith of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity in Baltimore. An easily transmitted smallpox virus engineered to have anthrax toxins poses one nightmare scenario. The leaders of synthetic biology have raised such concerns over the past decade in conferences and organizational discussions. Four years ago, MIT, the Venter Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies embarked on a study that examined the risks. Some of the field's biggest names belong to the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, funded by the National Science Foundation, which also hosts a center that creates ethical standards for the field. The European Commission sponsors a similar effort called SYNBIOSAFE. Rejeski says such efforts don't go far enough. "We need an independent risk assessment done by a group such as the National Research Council, not just by proponents of the technology," he says. Adds Benner: "It will be a long, long time" before synthetic biology produces bugs more deadly than ones already out there. "Nothing in the lab is better than nature." | |
| Flatheads are gobbling giants of the Schuylkill - Mercury Posted: 06 Sep 2009 06:57 AM PDT
Flathead catfish, like this forty pounder caught in Virginia, have, for better or worse, made their way into the Schuylkill watershed. Photo by Vic Attardo When I saw, just a few weeks ago, on the Sunday outdoor page that John Siegfried of Pottstown had caught a 40-pound flathead catfish in the Schuylkill River I was pleased and disheartened. |
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